Equalize

by Ryan DeBruyn

  It did not take long for Sela to be ready to depart, and after a brief discussion where she agreed to keep her eyes peeled for Azoth, they removed everything from the bag that the group would require for the day. Then she took off, holding his bag of holding which still had some solid weight to it because of the portable forge.

  The boys had been ecstatic to see the new gear that had been purchased. It was painful to give it away freely knowing that he and Sela still didn’t have any helmets, but Rocky did so anyway. These young men had become part of his family, and he needed them to be safe just as badly as he needed to find his biological one.

  The only reason he had been so flush with crystals in the first place was he had been looting each crystal for a group of three. Now, however, he realized he probably would never be flush again if the prices he saw yesterday were anything to go off of. On top of helmets for everyone, Algonquin Valley would require equipment and blueprints to truly become a place of refuge.

  One of the building blueprints that had been most tempting had been an operations room which could access the System EtherNet of whatever planet it resided on and could convey some information to the settlement. However, the price had been more than he had, even before the recent purchases, so the operations room had been added to the quickly expanding shopping list.

  A secondary issue to a lot of the blueprints was that they needed wiring, computers, and materials he didn’t yet have easy access to. While the components could be purchased in the shop, Garnell had told them they were a special order and they would need to place an order in advance so Garnell could cart them to the shop. Confused by this, Rocky had asked Sela if bags of holding were rare.

  Sela had explained that bags of holding were extremely rare. According to the ancient ancestor, she had seen a select few of them that were small in size with a maximum of forty percent weight reduction. During that conversation, Rocky’s eyes had grown contemplative as he discovered just how valuable the dungeon could be in the future, and he immediately planned to try to negotiate further with the entity as soon as he returned to Algonquin Valley.

  While the boys farmed the small game in the immediate area, Rocky took stock while in Stealth and began to plan out an action he was still reluctant to commit. It would be best if he could somehow scale the walls to the roof and enter from the top of the hospital. Scaling the building would definitely be possible if he could find a side of the building that was in shadow.

  In his troubled state, the boys found him numerous times with their pebbles, and for the first time, they beat Rocky at the game of hide and seek they played. The worst mistake came as Rocky had been attempting to jump from one tree branch to another when a deep voice sounded inside his head, “Rocky!” The voice had honestly been the most heartfelt and warmest shout he had ever heard, but that didn’t make it less startling.

  The following faceplant he had made after missing his landing and falling right in front of the three boys had been rather embarrassing, not to mention painful. Alex threw a pebble at him, ignoring it he was up in seconds and scanning the area, trying to understand what this new mental connection heralded. That was when a massive, black shape struck him from the side and tackled him to the ground.

  The boys all readied their weapons and were getting ready to attack the monstrous beast when Rocky started laughing and called out, “Don’t attack. It’s okay! Boys, meet Azoth!” The Chimera had flown in from above the treeline to perform his lick attack, and Rocky had not been expecting a massive, flying lion-bird to come through the canopy foliage.

  The boys lowered their weapons and just stared with mouths hanging open at a creature that was easily the size of a sixteen-wheeler cab. Rocky stood up, and the dark black creature towered over him, which was another thing he hadn’t been expecting. Looking up at the happy face of a deadly predator who also seemed to have the personality of a loyal dog made him chuckle at the absurdity of the situation.

  “Hello, Azoth. You seem to have grown since I last saw you.” Rocky said out loud for the benefit of the children. The Ether wave from the night before must have given the beast a bit of a growth spurt as indicated by his recent ability to fly.

  Mentally, Azoth responded while bobbing his massive head up and down almost like a whinnying horse, “Yes, I woke up after much fire. I definitely feel largest! Also, I could flight. I may have crashed once on the way over, but ground soft.” Rocky was struck with how strange it was to hear a voice as deep as a tuba note paired with the rambling, excited speech of a child.

  Azoth’s words caused Rocky to smile widely and ask the massive creature, “Do you think you can carry me?”

  At Rocky’s question, Azoth chuffed before butting his head into Rocky, which had the effect of knocking the large man over. “Yes. Human is small. Azoth carries!” At first, Rocky had thought his chuff had meant something negative and was taken off guard by the humorous tone of the Chimera's mental voice.

  Maybe anytime Azoth chuffs like that it’s a laugh?

  The other time he had heard similar noises from the beast, it had been in the dungeon after killing the cute bunny rabbit.

  While the boys continued to hunt, skin, and butcher surrounding monsters, Rocky rode Azoth in low, short stints above the treeline. Azoth was definitely shaky in the air and had a long way to go before he would be as graceful as Sela looked in her bird form, but for a trip to the top of a maximum height of five stories, Azoth could do it.

  By trial and error, Rocky discovered that he could cover himself and the Chimera in his Dark Cloak which cost approximately ten Ether points a second to maintain as long as he was using Stealth simultaneously. This meant he had, at a rough calculation, a little over thirty seconds of flight time before his Ether pool would deplete and the Dark Cloak would dissipate. With the Ether Draughts, he could extend that amount of time to a maximum of two minutes, according to his calculations.

  Glancing at the sun, Rocky could only hope that Sela would return from her trip before night fell. He had hoped to have one more visit to the shop before this particular fight, but he would have to hope the three recently purchased toys would work as described.

  His worries were put to rest when Sela arrived back at the cave a few hours after sunset. Once she changed back to human form, Rocky immediately took her aside. He spoke with her about his plans and what he needed her to accomplish.

  Sela was not okay with the plan since it would separate her from him during a very dangerous fight but finally conceded after seeing his mouth press into a firm line and his eyes grow stubborn. She was starting to realize that you couldn’t out-stubborn Rocky, at least not when he had dug in his heels on a subject. Also, the plan needed to happen at night which meant that they were wasting darkness.

  Sela looked at Rocky and sent up a silent prayer, praying he hadn’t bitten off more than he could chew.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A good note to make for the future would be not to expect a recent flyer to be able to land softly. Most roofs are built to handle a certain amount of weight, but a flying dump truck that drops on to it isn’t one of them. The infant Chimera had chosen to fold his wings and fall straight down twenty feet to land on target.

  Maybe Rocky should have known to have practiced targeted landings, but he had been under the assumption that the tremendous flying lion was in control of where he had been touching down the entire day. It turned out that he just coasted until his feet hit the ground, and so when Rocky specified mentally that the helipad on the roof was the target, Azoth had cannonballed it like he was dropping into a pool. And missed!

  They had really only taken off a third of the roof, though. That was good, right? It was that ‘minuscule’ piece of debris falling to the paving below that was the issue. The ensuing crash brought every eye up to the roof to see a massive shadow seeming to be attacking the hospital.

  Rocky dove off of Azoth’s back and mentally commanded him to fly away as fast as he could. Unfortunately, Azoth, who usuall
y took a running start to begin a flight, had no footing. Instead, he chose diving off of the roof to gain momentum as the best option.

  The flying dump truck dive bombed a square filled with mobilizing soldiers who were attempting to load into tanks and gear up. The best way to describe the scene from Rocky’s point of view was pandemonium as a winged nightmare dove out of the black fog. A massive, black lion’s head filled with rows of deadly teeth seemed to coalesce from nowhere.

  I am going to assume a requisition for new uniform pants will be required tonight.

  At the last moment, Azoth snapped his wings open and pulled up out of his five-story dive to skim the ground with claws that raked through anything they hit, which happened to be four tanks. Then he flapped once, began to gain altitude, and careened off into the surrounding night. Rocky watched his pet wing away and smiled, hoping Azoth would remain unharmed as he slowly shrank into the distance under heavy fire from tank muzzles which were too hastily aimed.

  Face hardening, Rocky dove inside the roof of the building, hoping that Corsair would still be inside and found that his luck continued to hold. They had broken off the corner of the fifth floor that was opposite the leader’s office. Ducking into a storage closet, Rocky waited for Sela to do her part.

  It wasn’t long before Rocky knew she had managed it, as a collective gasp suddenly sounded and the light from the other side of the door vanished. Smiling to himself, he exited the closet with Stealth and Dark Cloak active.

  It was time to find the sociopath and end this.

  Avoiding scrambling patrols was easy as Rocky’s eyes were already attuned to the dark and his Dark Cloak increased his night vision, but the militiamen who had grabbed flashlights were continually ruining theirs. On occasion, a beam of light would come close to striking him, but a quick duck was all it took as the beam flitted over his invisible and shrouded form. As long as he chose a corner to reside in, the added darkness of his cloak seemed to be ignored.

  What awaited him in the other wing of the hospital wasn’t specifically his expectation. While he knew he wouldn’t get the leader alone, he hadn’t expected two terminator style robots to be guarding a massive, vault-like door. Using Analyze from as far a distance away as he could manage, he was awarded the following notification.

  Conversion Sentinel

  Skymet Incorporated

  Level 15

  Master-Drone

  Moderate Analyze failed to uncover additional information.

  They were identical and made a wide-eyed Rocky immediately avoid the frontal assault, which may have been impenetrable anyway. Instead, he detoured around to the right and worked his way along side-corridors and nurses’ overnight rooms until he arrived at a wall he assumed was one of the four that squared in the leader’s residence.

  Something about the room he was standing in made Rocky pause briefly, trying to understand why the office he was in looked off. After gazing for a long moment, he realized that a concrete pillar jutted obtrusively into the room. Upon closer inspection, he realized that this pillar was added recently, and he could see the scuffs on the floor from where the edging beams and two by fours must have sat to hold the new addition of drying concrete.

  His sword made cutting into the wall seam like butter, and he exposed the back of a tall, thick, metal box. Trying not to alert whoever may be inside the room of his presence, he worked his way around, shaving off pieces until he was sure that there was a false wall on the front of the vault.

  Once he had made that discovery, he placed his hands on the vault and summoned it into his inventory. He felt his bag of holding gain some weight once the vault disappeared but not enough to worry about thanks to his hard-fought stats and levels. What was a bit of thievery if you were going to kill a man?

  Continuing to use his sword, Rocky slowly began pushing it into another part of the wall, waiting to see if he was met with resistance. Other than rebar and concrete, he was pleased to find that the wall wasn’t some type of reinforced alien metal. Not allowing the blade to fully penetrate to the other side, Rocky cut a man-sized door into the wall, leaving a small amount of concrete holding the piece in place on the opposite side.

  Placing a star pattern inside of his initial squared doorway, Rocky readied himself for what came next. It wasn’t so much the act of breaking into the office that worried him or even the two terminator guards outside the front door. It was the act of murder, of vigilante justice that forced him to pause and breathe hard.

  It wasn’t a long pause, as the war on his conscience eventually circled him around to the group of dead survivors he had discovered his very first day in the Ottawa area. Corsair was responsible for their deaths and probably many others. Corsair wouldn’t stop and deserved death, and unfortunately, Rocky was the only one who could deliver it.

  With a deep breath, he imbibed an Ether Draught and Spartan kicked his secret door. The concrete wall crumbled and turned into deadly projectiles as it flew into the room beyond. In its path was a deluge of soldiers who were just turning their heads as the concrete bullets careened into and through them.

  The wake of destruction was something Rocky would have nightmares about for years to come, but he compartmentalized and firmed his resolve as he waded into the room like death incarnate. While his opening move had removed a large group of soldiers loyal to Corsair, it hadn’t destroyed them all. In one quick glance, Rocky realized that Corsair had summoned a considerable number of loyal defenders to the room.

  As the projectile beams of light began zooming around the room, he immediately could tell that the weapons on use were not the same as the standard issue weapons of the grunts he had seen on patrol. No, these weapons looked different, sleeker, and more personalized. Each and every pistol, semi-automatic, or shotgun was unique in a way that screamed danger to his mind.

  Diving aside, Rocky managed to avoid a fair number of the blasts, but his armor was scored by a few all the same. A quick thought brought his armor information to hand as he dashed towards a cluster of guards who had helpfully clumped together, which made them an ideal shield against a continued barrage.

  Chimaera Knights Leather Armor Set + Gloves

  Ether Pool: 400/480

  As he had assumed, standing in the line of fire was not an option, and a burning hole in his left bicep was a testament to that. While the pain was there, it was a distant affair as his adrenaline overrode the nerve gates to his brain which were screaming, “There is a massive bloody hole in your arm.”

  On pure instinct, he pulled a Health Potion from his inventory and downed it before dropping the bottle and unsheathing his sword directly into the first man who was attempting to line his second shot up. The gun almost made it level to Rocky before his blade cut the main in twain. The entire remaining small army tensed trigger fingers far too early and far too on edge to worry about a trivial thing like friendly fire.

  Snarling, Rocky was already diving into the cluster of militiamen, though, and so when the barrage came his way, he was well behind a press of bodies and rolling over on his back on the ground as the laser fire tore through the men. Since the group was going to do his job for him, he continued the tactic.

  Pushing off the ground, he lunged at the next cluster of soldiers and was there far too early. The defenders all seemed to move as if stuck in honey. This made it extremely difficult on Rocky as he couldn’t cut them down if he wanted to use them as a living shield. Although, one man in the group was moving slightly faster and his gun would be on target far sooner than the rest.

  Rocky sunk his sword into the man's upper chest, right where the neck met the torso, which allowed the blade to catch on the collarbone. The soldier's weapon fell from his hands as his brain fired multiple muscles in death throes, and Rocky pulled the body in front of himself as the next barrage lit the room in reds, blues, and greens.

  The bolts were unfortunately not stopped by the man’s body, and many tore into Rocky as he dropped the man and gulped another Health Pot
ion with arms that were now screaming out in pain. Moments later, he realized that the green bolts acted like some sort of acid, and he was forced to use Dark Mend on the run as he attempted to clear a gap in the floor.

  In the next moments, two things happened. Rocky realized he wasn’t going to make it to the next group before the remaining guards let loose, and the terminators broke through the front door to join the battle. Dropping his Dark Cloak left behind the dark fog, and Rocky jumped into the air in Stealth while the mist stayed stationary. This caused all of the guards to fire at the spot he had been occupying a moment before.

  The sentinels who had pulsing, scarlet eyes tracked his movement, though, and they moved like a striking snake as they began crossing the space, not caring what was in their direct path. These alien robots didn’t carry a weapon on them, which made Rocky momentarily believe they were going to attack him with their metal fists. He was proven wrong a moment later as he landed amongst a group of stunned guards who were all staring at the red-eyed metal devils closing in on them.

  The eyes lit brighter as laser beams fired from them, cutting through the stunned defenders. The beams weren’t pulsed like the rifles but were more like an incredibly long lightsaber which was going to strike Rocky in moments. Allowing his momentum to continue, he pushed hard with his hands and entered back into a sprint as he regained his feet with a half turn. As he weaved to avoid the lasers, he scanned the room and noticed a smiling Corsair standing in an enclosed container made of some sort of clear material. Clearly, Corsair was confident his safe room was unbeatable.

  Shaking his head, and sending up a silent prayer, Rocky removed a few items from his inventory. He had been hoping he didn’t have to use these. While in the shop, he had also purchased three very pricey plasma grenades. He checked the description one final time just to be sure he wasn’t about to commit suicide accidentally.